


The Melancholy Tale of a Ceramic Heart

by kaleiidoscopesoda



Category: Non-Fandom - Fandom, Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Angst, Angst and Tragedy, Character Death, Demons, Described Character Death, Hell, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Nonbinary Character, Other, Sad Ending, Some Fluff, Spellcasting Gone Wrong, aka i cried writing this, and there isn't a tag for nb/m, sort of soft but gets dark real fast, tagging this as m/m even though the main character is nonbinary because it is gay, the ending is sad y'all i'm warning you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-21
Updated: 2019-10-21
Packaged: 2020-05-14 13:30:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19274293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaleiidoscopesoda/pseuds/kaleiidoscopesoda
Summary: Camille J. Anson, a quiet wizard living in a cottage deep in the woods, decides to summon a nature golemn to help them with their spellwork. However, this backfires spectacularly, and ends with them summoning a demon by the name of Ren Arata. Shenanigans ensue as they desperately try to get him to go back to Hell.





	The Melancholy Tale of a Ceramic Heart

**Author's Note:**

> hello!! i wrote this for a personal short story project, and it got a bit longwinded, but i'm still really proud of how it turned out so i figured i would post it here!! i'm not too sure how coherent it is, considering it was formed from bits and pieces of an rp a friend and i did over a year ago, but i hope it isn't too bad!! have fun :)  
> a/n: WOW looking back at this several months later this. sure is a story! yeah have fun reading this the ending is wack

Camille J. Anson was simply a quiet light wizard living in the middle of the forest in an old run-down cottage, the kind of person who just disappears into the trees and never comes back out. For the most part, nothing more, and nothing less. They were the exact opposite of the kind of person that dealing with adventure and chaos comes naturally to, yet it still persisted to follow them somehow. Rotten luck, they supposed. They really never were a people person, and they were rather glad that the sudden shift into forest life didn’t bother them much - all thanks to their oh-so-loving parents banishing them from the household for getting involved in dark magic, no matter how much they attempted to redeem themself by throwing themself into light magic studies. Either way, that wasn’t something for the aloof spellcaster to dwell on right now.

Lounging on the run down couch in their living room with a giant tomb of spells in front of them, they brushed their hands on their pant legs and grinned at the scene before them, sunlight reflecting off of the large circle glasses that framed their coppery eyes in an expression that could most certainly be read as proud mischief - a rare thing for the spell-caster who barely smiled. The living room was tiny, yet currently elaborately decorated with crystals in a circle and all manner of sigils and runes formed by vines and various plants. The setup was perfect, and in Camille’s mind, there was no possible way that this spell to summon a friendly nature golem to help around the house could go awry. They had worked on this preparation all morning and well into the afternoon, and they leaned their short stature against a bookshelf and huffed and wheezed a bit with exhaustion, taking a moment to run their still slightly dusty hands through their wavy locks of almost-ginger blonde hair to get it out of their face. Turning back to the tomb they had opened on the couch beside them, they hefted it up on to their lap and started reading off of the delicate sounding incantations written in perfect yet ancient-looking cursive to complete the ritual. It was a language they didn’t recognize off of the top of their head save for a few words that seemed to fit the theme of the spell, but they were pronouncing it like it looked like it should be pronounced, so it should work, right? The sigils and circle in front of them started to glow with a bright light, and Camille excitedly clapped their hands together, eager to greet their new friend and assistant.

However, this quickly went south. Instead of glowing a pale and welcoming green, the white light instead quickly cut to a deep crimson and the plants used to form the runes quickly shriveled and distorted. Camille flinched and immediately tried to scan the spell-book in front of them for what they could have done wrong to make it do this so suddenly, before a strangled noise that seemed as if it was trying to be a roar and a shriek at the same time sounded from the middle of the circle, making them nearly jump out of their skin and drop the book on the floor with a loud ‘THUNK’. Instead of a friendly rock creature bound by vines and plants, a demonic creature with oddly fox-like features - on closer inspection, a pair of fluffy ears on top of his head, curled horns sitting behind them, and at least three tails - was now standing in the midst of the shriveled vines and plants, and he looked like he had just been dragged out of Hell. And, to be fair, he had been, and he had every right to be as pissed off and angry as he was.

“Huh- woah what the hell! Get out of my house!” Camille managed to stammer out a few words while sitting on the couch dumbstruck like a deer in the headlights. In their panicked scramble they had scaled the pile of cushions and blankets and were now sitting on the back of the couch, back pressed up against the warm sunny glass of the window.

“Me? Get out of your house? You’re the one who summoned me, damn it!” The demon wasn’t too thrilled by being stuck inside the altar circle due to the immense amount of light magic contained in the quartz framing it, and he beat his clawed hands against the invisible barrier that he was currently contained within. “Maybe if you made this area a little more demon-friendly before dragging me out of Hell, I actually would be able to leave!”

“Excuse me? Demon-friendly? I didn’t summon you! I summoned a nature elemental!” For emphasis, the beyond peeved spellcaster hopped off of their perch on the back of the couch and picked up the huge tomb off of the floor, flipping to the page with the spell they used and promptly shoving it at the fiend’s face. “See! Nature elemental! Little floaty rock dude that grows plants! Not a demon!”

“How do you fudge a spell so badly that you perform one of the most difficult spells ever?” The fox-like demon man sneered at Camille, baring his teeth and anger glinting in his deep magenta eyes, white feline pupils shrunk to almost invisible slits, “Do you have any idea what you’re messing with? I could destroy you in an instant!” he roared in a furious rage, clawing at the barrier once again, several kitsune-esque tails flaring behind him.

Dropping all other expression from their face, Camille glared at the now irritatingly obnoxious stranger residing in the restraining spell circle that took up half of their living room. He couldn’t do anything to hurt them within that circle, but it didn’t restrict Camille similarly. Not breaking eye contact, they dropped the heavy book to the side and let it hit the floor noisily before exasperatedly sitting back down on the couch. They raised their hands, palms facing outward in a mocking show of passiveness before bright jasmine-tinted light magic poured out of them, showering the whole room in pastel yellow. For a split second it intensified to the point where barely anything else but bright white could be seen before abruptly fading out, leaving only the vague scent of lemons and fresh linen behind in its place. The demon flinched backwards, covering his eyes with his hands and hissing loudly, all traces of his previous snarl disappearing from his face as a flash of fear crossed his features.  
“Alright, alright! Just open the circle so I can get out and make my own portal back. I feel like I’m suffocating around all of this light magic.” He huffed, leaning against the barrier and sliding down to a sitting position up against it. 

“And why should I trust you to not harm me once I release you, Mr. ‘I can destroy you in an instant’?” Camille shot back, using the hellspawn’s snappy anger against him. However, they took pity at the defeated and almost panicked look he gave them at that remark, and stepped forward to sweep aside some of the quartz with a foot, breaking the circle as all of the elements involved in the spell lost their glowing sheen. 

A devilish - pun not intended - grin crossed over the demon’s face as he bolted in to what could be easily assumed to be the spellcaster’s kitchen. Said spellcaster groaned at this and followed close on his heels, shrieking as he dove into their pantry and grabbed the closest bag, ripping it open with his claws. In the process of grabbing it one of his tails flailed and knocked over a box of ice cream cones that resided on one of the shelves in the pantry, letting them fall to the floor as they cracked and released a torrent of edible shards across the floor. At least he had the courtesy of not knocking down anything too important, like the jars of potions that resided not too far from the fallen box of cones.

“HEY!” Camille barked, awestruck at the fiend’s sudden rudeness, “What do you think you’re doing! You don’t just go in to some random person’s house and raid their pantry! I don’t know what the rules are like in Hell but here in the mortal plane there are laws that call that burglary.” They tried to frantically grasp at the demon and pull him back out of their pantry, settling on one of his fluffy ears and digging their - albeit short - fingernails into the soft velvety fur. 

“Ow!! Stop that! You’re the one who summoned me here, I didn’t “just go”! Plus, maintaining this humanoid form takes a lot of energy. And you really think demons abide by laws?” The demon shook his ears free of Camille’s grasp and continued devouring the chips he had opened, spilling more crumbs all over the tile flooring as he reached for the ice cream cones he had previously knocked over.

Groaning, Camille grabbed one of the fiend’s arms and dragged him towards the table, pushing him into a chair with the box of cones that he had just dug his claws into. “The least you could do is sit at the table and eat out of a bowl like a normal human being. Or, at least a somewhat normal humanoid creature.” Grabbing a dustpan and broom, the spellcaster quickly tried to reverse the damage that had been done to their pantry as the fox-like demon sat at the table and happily crunched away. After most of the crumbs were deposited neatly into the trash can and off the floor, Camille sighed and stood still for a moment, trying to figure out what to do now that there was now a demon in their house and no way that they knew of to get him out. Deciding that they could stop and have some tea to calm down and think the situation over better, they grabbed a box of tea bags and put a kettle on the stove, content with busying their hands and mind with something until the curious demon broke them out of their trance.

“What’cha doing?” It was almost shocking that he paused momentarily in his ravenous snacking to care enough to ask, though at second glance it looked like he had finished off the last of the random snacks and things that he had snagged from the pantry and hadn’t had a chance to grab more yet.

“Making some tea. Do you want some?” came their short and blunt response, almost twinged with regret towards the end of the sentence as if they wish they hadn’t offered. They had a limited amount of tea carefully stashed in their pantry where the demon hadn’t bothered to pilfer, and they would rather keep it that way, but there was no going back now.

“Sure! Damn, it’s been a long time since I had actual proper tea… All of the food in Hell is nasty, but you get so used to it after a time that you forget how good real food is.” The fiend seemed to perk up at being asked, staring off into space with more of a contemplative expression than Camille thought was possible for a boy who seemed like he had very few brain cells. Maybe they had judged him wrong? Probably not, but the expression imprinted itself into the wizard’s mind and hit them in a soft spot they didn’t know they had.

The idle conversation continued on from that point, with the two of the eventually sitting down with their respective cups of tea - not before the demon had a ring-tailed fit over how much sugar was in his, because they apparently didn’t have sugar in Hell either and he insisted in almost having more sugar than actual tea - and sipping their tea rather peacefully. However, there was a nagging question in the back of the spellcaster’s mind that couldn’t quit bubbling up to mingle amongst their other thoughts and it eventually spilled out of their mouth unannounced, “How do you plan to get back? I can’t really help, what little dark magic I’ve ever known has been overwritten by the past few years of studying light magic.” They felt a bit guilty for summoning the hellspawn without having a way to get him back to where he’s supposed to be, despite it being an accident in the first place that they weren’t currently teaching a nature golem the ins and outs of the cottage. 

“I could make a portal, but there’s way too much light magic in this cottage for me to be able to do that safely. If I tried now it would pretty much instantaneously close and if I tried to get in it I might accidentally get chopped in half or transported wrong.” The still nameless demon pondered over his options aloud, though Camille supposed that if he was only going to be here for the next day or so they wouldn’t need to know his name. Standing up from their position at the table, the magician made their way over to a bookshelf that was adjacent to the kitchen table and started slowly mumbling the titles under their breath, evidently trying to find a specific book. After a minute or so of this, they pulled out a large grey book, flipping through the pages of the tomb while quietly listing off spells. 

“Magic fireworks… item animation… item invisibility.. nope, definitely don’t need that… Aha! Energy nullification.” The spectacled spellcaster pointed proudly at a page in the spell book after several minutes of flipping through page after page of seemingly unrelated spells. “This should do the trick.”

“... Why is there a drawing of a cat toy next to the item animation spell?” The demon glanced at the page, just very barely holding back his laughter at the random assortment of spells. “All of this stuff is pretty much useless! Dark magic’s where it’s at, when in the world are you ever gonna use magical fireworks often enough for it to warrant a page in a spell book… are you sure this is even gonna work?”

“Hey! I have cats, and I’m lazy! Sometimes I need something to get Rosemary out of my hair for an hour or two while I do a spell, so I’ll animate a toy mouse and call it a day. Don’t tell me you demons don’t have petty spells for random things as well,” Not taking too kindly to their profession being called useless, Camille rolled their eyes and puffed out their cheeks briefly in frustration as they tried not to smack the bordering on obnoxious demon boy in front of them. “Nature fireworks are for when I want to get the local tourists off my tail for a bit and I don’t want to set the forest on fire. And yes, I’ve used this particular spell at least twice nullifying fire energy for tonics and potions so they didn’t burn this - mind you, almost completely wooden - cottage to the ground.”

“Ooh- you have cats? Can I see them? There are no normal cute animals in Hell,” He completely forgot about the objective at hand, caring more about seeing the fabled felines than getting himself home for the time being. “Pleaaase?” The demon pleaded, pairing it with an unfairly cute pair of puppy dog eyes as he whined.

“Sure, just hang on a minute,” Camille figured it wouldn’t do any harm as they hopped off to go find their two cats, returning with a rather unhappy long haired Russian Blue in one arm and a light grey and orange calico in the other that looked mildly more amused with the situation. “The one with the blue-grey fur is Chamomile, she’s usually grumpy but she usually doesn’t go farther than attempting to eat your hand if she’s not especially thrilled with the situation. Keyword there being attempt. The calico is Rosemary, she’s much more chill and generally just sleeps most of the time, but when she’s actually awake and moving around she’s an entity of havoc in a very small pastel pelted package.” The spellcaster gently set both of the cats down on the table, who surprisingly stayed calm and on the table.

The demon reached out a hand to let the calico sniff it, before stroking her head. "They're so nice! The hell-demon-awful-cat-things are the worst- Wait, we have a spell to do! How in the world do we actually cast this though…?” He glanced at the page, listing off some of the ingredients, mispronouncing quite a few of them in the process. "Actually, you should probably do it, I have no idea how any form of light magic works"

"It's not that tricky to do, but it does take a certain amount of familiarity with light magic." Darting from place to place in the cottage trying to find all of the ingredients, Camille came back to the table with an armful of miscellaneous trinkets and set them down on the table. The pile of things looked more like the contents of a kleptomaniac's cupboard, but it would have to do. "I'll go ahead and nullify both light and nature around this cottage since I don't want to nullify one and throw off the balance of the other." Taking the pile into the living room, where the remains of the altar circle from earlier still remained, the wizard started setting up the items into position. After a quick chant, it felt like a weight had been lifted off of the area, and it was a bit easier to stand up straight and take a deep breath. Even people suited to a certain magic type take damage from being under intense magic stress for too long. "There we go! Feel better?"

“Ooh, that’s much better,” The fiend sighed as he took the opportunity to stretch, taking a few deep breaths and cracking his knuckles, “okay, you might want to stand back.” He chanted a few words of what Camille could assume to be Demonic under his breath before one of his claws started to glow a bright vermillion, and he made a tearing motion in the air that seemed to open a hole in the reality of the cottage. Quickly this tear grew to the size of a useable portal, and the demon turned to the spellcaster for a short moment before he stepped into the luminescent void, “Well, I guess this is goodbye.” A hint of sadness was evident in his voice before his form disappeared entirely in the rift.

"Bye." Camille said with a wave before turning around to find the long discarded spell book to see what they had done wrong in the elemental summoning. Blinking a few times, the very rarely sad spellcaster found their rusty copper eyes tearing up. God damn it! They had gotten awfully attached to the quirky hellspawn, even though he had pretty much threatened to kill them not even two hours ago, eventually reasoning that their emotions were just stupid. Just as they managed to will the tears away from streaming down their freckled face, they found their vision blurring quite substantially and their body become numb. This definitely wasn't normal - and the slightly absentminded wizard had remembered to sleep recently! A startled gasp flew out of their mouth before they felt the wind forcefully knocked out of them and their entire vision blank out.

Camille felt themself drop to the ground somewhere, but they weren't quite sure where with their sudden loss of vision. The ground was.... warm? If they had fallen off of the stool they were sitting on in the living room, it would probably be pleasantly cold. Either way, the warmth was oddly comforting, more so than the acrid smell of the air around them and the pressure pulling down on their limbs like they had been buried under what could only be described as a pile of very wet, wool blankets. They didn't have the strength to get up, much less the motivation to, since they could see nothing more than a blank white slate due to either the pressure or the shock. The wizard so very badly just wanted to pass out then and there, before they were startled somewhat into a higher level of consciousness by the fuzzy noise of someone yelling next to them.

A stream of curses - some in demonic, and some in a language Camille could somewhat understand despite their very hazy perception of the current reality - streamed out of the demon’s mouth as he picked the dazed spellcaster up in his paws, trying to disguise them in the long soft fur of his true demonic form. Other demons were starting to look at him rather oddly, and he panicked as he tried to find a way to get them back to the cottage safely without another hellspawn deciding that a human sounded like a nice evening snack. 

Camille attempted to bring a hand up to rub at their eyes, only to blink and find through their very blurry vision that they had lost their glasses, and that their hand was very firmly gripping onto what seemed to be.... fur? The wizard groggily mumbled something under their breath, their voice full of tiredness that signaled that they were just barely able to keep themself from not passing out again, and that they certainly didn't understand the severity of the current situation. Through the groggy white noise, Camille did manage to slowly pick up a few choice words along the lines of 'You are..... in Hell...... dying..' and that was enough to startle the spellcaster into a higher level of consciousness besides just sleepy half-awakeness. While that was certainly not the full sentence that had been said, it definitely did the trick in getting them to pay slightly more attention to what was going on.

Realizing that he had most likely startled the wizard in his arms through his attempts to wake them up only partially processing through their system, the demon instead pushed the majority of his energy towards creating another rift so that he didn’t have to explain any further. “I’m gonna try and get us back to the cottage, you’re quite literally about to get eaten by demons.”

Hearing that sentence mostly coherently, Camille tried to push what little energy they had after being dragged into Hell towards helping the fiend create the portal back. Even though they weren’t much of a help, it still greatly drained them and they could only imagine how exhausted the demon must feel as they both staggered through the portal and back into the seemingly serene living room of the cottage. Being overcome by the same blurry and numbing feeling that they did the first time they were dragged through a portal, Camille fell onto the carpet with all of the sensation in their limbs gone. Feebly turning their head and squinting to even barely make out the color of the windows in the next room over, the wizard was greeted by two very nearly pitch black and purple fuzzy rectangles, signaling that it was well past dusk. With no energy left to talk, the two of them collapsed in a messy pile on the floor, passing out dead asleep almost instantaneously due to the extreme fatigue.

Camille didn't know how long they had been out for, but it must have been quite a considerable amount of time based on the light that was shining through the kitchen windows and quite inconveniently right in their eyes, waking them up along with the loud rumbling snores of the demon beside them. Crawling out of the tangle of limbs they had been previously stuck in, miraculously not waking up the fiend in the process, they made their way to the kitchen to at least get some breakfast ready, no matter how late it was. Upon reaching the stove, and very blurrily being able to read the digital clock that currently read “1:24pm”, they grabbed a spare pair of glasses off of an adjacent shelf and went to work trying to make an alright meal out of what they had in the fridge.

A peaceful amount of time went past as Camille prepared breakfast - they managed to find some bacon in the back of their fridge, along with some miscellaneous toaster pastries and things that they didn't know how long they had been in there, but they were probably still fine to eat. Toaster pastries just have that quality. They started to wonder when the demon in the living room would wake up - and speak of the devil, and he shall appear.

“Hey, wizard guy? You dead?” From a glance into the other room, it looked like the fiend was sitting groggily on the floor, rubbing at his eyes and trying to make sense of his surroundings. It must be weird dealing with the momentary amnesia of waking up on some random person's floor in a dimension you didn't even live in in the first place.

"The name's Camille and I'm in the kitchen making food since your snoring woke me up!" Camille yelled, remembering that even though they had almost been killed yesterday at least once they still hadn't told the demon their name. The wizard was a bit rusty on cooking anything other than things that come pre-packaged or just have to be heated up in the microwave or a toaster, but they thought the demon would appreciate something more than just the several bags of impulse conjured Doritos that were stacked in the pantry. 

“Oh- we haven't even shared names. I'm Ren.” The demon got up and poked his head through the kitchen doorway, wondering what the spellcaster was making for breakfast. Realizing that there was bacon, he almost full on sprinted into the room like an over excited teenage boy - which, to be fair, he practically was one, just in demon form. Curiously, he opened the fridge and peered in, poking at a bag of freezer burnt waffles.

"Hey-- shoo! Get out of the fridge, there's an entire plate full of bacon on the counter for you, dork!" Camille playfully shoved the demon, hopping up on their tiptoes to reach up and bap Ren on the nose. The wizard turned back to the fridge, sighing and looking disappointedly at the several packages full of sickly sweet waffles. "I never thought I would regret buying so many toaster waffles." They had long since had any sort of craving for these things, after eating an entire bag in one sitting and getting extremely sick. What a fun way to figure out that you're allergic to blueberries! "If you want anything to drink, there's milk, water, and a few probably expired juice boxes you can have."  
The idle conversation like this went on for a little while as the two of them contently ate their breakfasts, more than glad to get something in their systems after the exhaustion of the night before. They chatted about just about anything they came to mind - random things that the two of them thought of, attempting to become at least somewhat acquainted with someone that they had quite literally been to Hell and back with. Once the two of them were pretty much finished with what was on their plates, Camille stood up and stretched, looking out towards the garden through the kitchen window.

“How about we go outside for a bit? I'm sure we could both use some fresh air after last night's… excursion. Plus the energy nullification spell extends a bit farther than just the cottage itself, so we'd be fine just hanging out in the garden.” Not really waiting long enough for an answer, Camille grabbed a light jacket and opened the sliding glass door outside and motioned their head to the small garden, waiting for Ren to follow them. The two of them made their way outside, sitting in the grass that was still vaguely damp with dew and looking around at the serene scene around them, birds chirping and trees swaying in the slight breeze. 

“So what do you grow out here…?” Ren glanced around at the different garden beds of what looked to be miscellaneous herbs and the run of the mill flowers. Getting up off of the ground, he walked over to what he assumed to be a giant mint plant that was threatening to spill over the sides of the wooden log planter that it had been planted in. Curious, he picked off a handful of leaves - in afterthought, perhaps a bit more than he should have grabbed, and probably not a great idea - and shoved them in his mouth, flinching and hissing a bit when he sunk his teeth into the bitter leaves and discovered that they were not very pleasant to eat. This earned a snicker from the spellcaster that was still sitting on the ground a few feet away, causing Ren to send a half-hearted glare in their direction.

The moment was almost perfect, the two of them sitting in the peaceful forest with not a single distraction or disruption. It was purely a wholesome moment between the two of them, lightheartedly bickering and giggling at each other as they chatted as if they hadn’t known each other for just two days. I guess going on an adventure to Hell and back really brings people together, huh? Their back and forth went on for quite a while, and it must’ve been nearing around 7pm with the way the sun was slowly moving towards the horizon, hiding behind the trees and casting golden rays on the demon boy and the nonbinary spellcaster. It was amazingly pristine, the kind of occasion someone would wish would last for the rest of forever, until it wasn’t.

A loud piercing noise shot through the quiet ramblings of the pair, startling both of them as Camille reflexively cupped their hands over their ears in an attempt to ward off the sound that was threatening to shatter their eardrums, and secondly the fragile glass of their spectacles as well. A mortified look flashed across Ren’s face, lingering long enough for Camille to recognize the panic in his eyes before he quickly swapped it for a less petrified look for the sake of not worrying the smaller wizard beside him, though he had already failed. The noise persisted for perhaps a few number of seconds, no matter how many eternities long it seemed to the two as it shot through what was an otherwise paradisiacal moment. The demon got up off of the soft grass and took out what looked to be a little screened device of some sort and held it up to one of his canid ears as if it was a phone, though it looked nothing like one. He momentarily turned away from the wizard who was still sitting on the ground, staring off into space as he spoke into the device in some guttural language. Based on his tone, Camille could assume that this phone call was currently an emotional rollercoaster for both parties, a deeper and slightly more guttural voice just barely able to be heard from the other side of the call.

Due to the vague and barely comprehensive knowledge the wizard had of Demonic, they managed to grasp that the situation at hand was not a good one. As Ren turned around, the expression on his face definitely didn't help the situation, and confirmed Camille's suspicion to the vaguest extent. “So… what was that?” They broke the uneasy silence that had begun to sink into the air, making the wizard's stomach do flips in anticipation and anxiety of news that certainly wasn't going to be good. Even after they had asked there was still a silence for what felt like an eon, with Ren's worried glances to Camille and then back off into space as he tried to find the right words for whatever situation had just happened only lengthening the moment.

“So, uumm……” The demon started, lacking the carefree confidence he had owned when he was speaking to Camille previously and instead speaking in a nervous, almost stuttery tone, “... I may or may not have just. Received a call from a high ranking official in Hell,” He managed to push the words out of his mouth when obviously they hurt to say, taking a few unnatural breaks in the middle of his speech to stop himself from grimacing. Taking a deep breath, Ren tried to get over with the rest of the sentence that sat in his throat uncomfortably like the frog you get in your throat right before you're about to vomit. “And I knew that hanging around a light mage was going to get me in trouble but they want me back in Hell. Like, right now.” He stopped trying not to make a face towards the end of his words, restrained terror flooding his eyes and threatening to over flow them and spill out on to his red-tinted cheeks as he just barely hiccupped away what sounded to be the start of a worried sob.

“Oh. Alright.” Camille just barely muttered the pathetic excuse of a sentence as they sat in shock as the demon before them almost immediately started preparing a portal. They had no other words to offer, no worries of potential comfort, nor any charismatic motivation to try and bestow some confidence to the nearly shaking fiend. There was just what felt to be a black hole that had just been punched into the middle of their chest, a void that provided no emotions as they stared blankly at the scene that was happening all too fast in front of them. As Ren was nearly done preparing the portal, but not completely finished as to accidentally cause the same problem as last time, Camille managed to finally shakily stand up from the ground and stagger over to Ren, almost collapsing onto him as they wrapped their arms around him in a tight hug. It was then, and only then that they were miraculously able to find some words, mumbling a barely audible, “Stay safe.” into Ren's shoulder as they held each other for what they wished could have been an eternity. The moment was over too fast, with Ren tearing himself away from the hug and motioning for the spellcaster to stand back from the portal as he started stepping into the glowing rift, robbed of his capability of speech as well. And within an instant, he was gone. 

For a few fleeting seconds, Camille braced themself against a tall flower pot and just stood there, staring at the place where the rift had just closed behind Ren. They couldn't figure if what logically could have been the past ten minutes had flew by too fast, or inched on too painfully for way too long. In either circumstance they really didn't have much to think about it before they were back collapsed on the soft grass where they had happily been chatting handfuls of minutes prior, head in their hands as crystalline tears made no hesitation to fly down their pale freckled cheeks. They had absolutely no idea what to do, the entire past two days seeming too surreal to even be real in the first place. Camille hadn't really had functional human (or rather, humanoid) contact since they had run away into the forest three years prior after they were banished from their own home. And now that Ren was gone, even after what had just barely been a full 24 hours, they realized how crushingly lonely they had been. Sure, they had Rosemary and Chamomile, but not having a meaningful conversation towards someone who could actually speak in so long truly did break a person. In a panic they scrambled up off of the floor, rushing back into the cottage through the door that they had forgotten to close when they had first come outside. In their rush, their emotionally overloaded mind figured that if they put enough spells together, they could at least somewhat protect Ren from whatever wrath he may face, no matter how bad that plan would seem to a normally functioning mind. They frantically scurried around the house, grabbing random spell reagents from different bins and dumped them on the living room carpet, spraying some dust over the plush cream color as some of the bins hadn't been touched in several months. Grabbing one of their spell books off of a stray bookshelf they had propped up in the side of the living room, they started chanting off protection and luck spells that they happened to have the ingredients to at a startling rate before their body decided they simply couldn't handle it anymore. The amount of spells they were trying to cast in such a short amount of time without any regard to how much energy they had or how much energy the spells would take was simply too much. As they attempted to sprint into the kitchen again to grab more reagents they stopped and sat at the table to count their potion bottles and quickly realized how exhausted they were. Trying to will themself to stand back up again, they failed tremendously, emotions finally catching up to them and as soon as they set their head down on the cool wood of the table they fell into a fitful yet very needed sleep. 

It must’ve been the very early hours of the crack of dawn when Camille was woken up again by a loud crash and a weak gasp from somewhere else in the kitchen. Startled, they sat up from their current position slumped over at the table, wincing as the blood rushed to their head. They looked frantically around the room to see what had made the sound, vision blurry with the remnants of their tears and with the lack of light in the kitchen. However, they managed to find the source of the noise rather quickly, whether they wanted to see the scene in front of them or not. They saw deep crimson pooling into their off-white carpet first before looking up past it and seeing the heavily wounded and bleeding out body that all of the blood was coming from. Nothing would have been able to prepare their eyes from the spectacle that was happening much too fast, as if it was out of some cheap horror movie. “Ren!” They gasped, choking back the sob that had rushed to clog their throat as they scrambled over beside him, not caring about the blood that was seeping into their grey sweatpants or coating their hand at an astonishing rate as they kneeled next to the wounded demon and carefully placed a hand on his face, tilting it to face them. 

The completely drained and pitiful smile that Ren gave them as deep mauve eyes met ruddy bronze only helped grind the metaphorical heel into Camille’s heart as it shattered as if it had been built out of thin clay and hurled against concrete. They frantically tried to lift the demon off of the carpet and onto their lap despite the size difference between the two, trying to get him to tilt his head up enough so that the steady streams of sanguine fluid coming out of his nose and mouth wouldn’t suffocate him. Both of them knew almost instantly that it was a fruitless gesture as Ren coughed wetly, trying to turn his head and not spew blood on the mortified spellcaster in front of him, managing this only partially. There were no words, just a crushing silence as Ren tried to hold onto his last threads of consciousness and Camille wrestled with the terrifying fact that they could do nothing to help the dying boy in their arms.

The stillness was quietly broken as the demon attempted to speak in between wheezes and gorey coughs, lifting a bruised and gashed hand up to cradle the side of Camille’s face. “I tried my best to stay safe,” That sorrowful smile was back again to, though unintentionally, make sure that there was nothing left but dust from the spellcaster’s ceramic heart. “I’m sorry.” His voice was just barely above an audible whisper, his strength seeping from his veins and into the wooden panels beneath the carpet. Camille leaned their face into the torn up hand before quietly sobbing, tears falling to mix with the blood as they tried to muster up the right words, a million different things that they could say swarming in their exhausted mind like angry bees yet all of them reluctant to leave the hive. “I’m sorry too.” They managed to choke out an apology between sobs, sorry for the many things that would forever haunt them. Camille - through some feat of grief-stricken acrobatics - bent down and buried their face into the demon’s shoulder. It wasn't long before he fell notably limp in their arms, and not many more seconds, or minutes - not that time really mattered in a moment like this - passed after that before his body evaporated into thin air, leaving only the pooled blood and memories behind, still shocking no matter how commonplace it was to know that was what happened to bodies that passed in realms that were not their own. 

Camille sat there, soaked in blood and holding nothingness in their arms as they cried in the dark, skin buzzing with the numb pins-and-needles of exhaustion and emotions collapsing into a blank hole in the middle of their chest. 

They were completely and utterly alone once again.

**Author's Note:**

> despite the crushingly sad ending, i hope y'all enjoyed this!! i don't write a whole lot and i was surprised i was able to bust out 7k words for this, so comments and criticisms are much appreciated!!


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